Paris

Day 1

The weekend after Venice was very short.  We got home Saturday morning. Slept all day pretty much and then went back to re-packing on Sunday.  We took the last train to Rome on Sunday night and spent the night in the McDonalds across the street from the Station.  At 4:30 in the morning, we hopped on the shuttle to the airport which took about and hour.  Roma Campiagno is, for lack of a better word, unorganized. It is pretty much just a hanger and you get bussed to your airplane.  I slept from take-off to landing. It was awesome.  We landed around 9:30 in Beauvais and then had to take another shuttle from Beauvais to Paris.  Berta and I walked from Porte Maillot to the tourist office to pick up our passes for the Metro and the Museums. We then walked up to our hostel and got settled. 

Once settled, we grabbed a map and started formulating a plan.  We settled on the Eiffel Tower and the Champs Elysees for the day.  Being in Paris for me was a blur and a dream.  We got out of the subway at the Eiffel Tower stop and we came around the corner and there it was. I have had my room decorated with Paris for like forever! And I always wanted to go and now I was there!! We took pictures with it and of each other and decided we would climb it another day.  We took the subway over to the Arc de Triomphe and started walking down the Champs Elysees.  The road was blocked off because of a celebration for the 15^th anniversary of the end of the war in Albania.  So we got to walk in the street and get pictures. After walking for awhile we were pretty exhausted so we decided to go back to the hostel and crash. But first, without fail, I of course had to injure myself somehow.  I took a nasty fall in one of the subway stations and slammed my knee into the edge of the concrete.  Nothing broken, but it swelled to the size of a grapefruit and it turned some pretty colors.

Day 2

The next day was going to be our garden day, including the Tulleries and the Luxembourg Gardens.  I think Berta and I have decide that we are not garden people.  First of all the Tulleries are a joke.   They are just trees and gravel infront of the Louvre.  We thought they were going to be really impressive. That’s a big negative though.  But we walked through them all the way to the Louvre.  We ended up taking pictures with the glass pyramid and everything when we got there. The Louvre is closed on Tuesdays so there is no one there making it a great day to take pictures outside.  From there we took the subway to the Luxembourg Gardens.  These were more green than the Tulleries, but there were so many people….(maybe I’m just too picky about my outside spaces…).

Once we finished walking around the gardens, we had only been out for about 3 hours. So we had to decide what to do with the rest of our day.  We settled on climbing the Eiffel Tower. (Keep in mind, Melissa slammed her knee the night before. Oh yeah. I’m awesome.)  So we paid 3 euro to climb the stairs to the second level. And I survived too! I actually did really well and kept a good pace the whole way up! I was proud of myself.

We stayed up there for quite awhile, just taking in the sights.  When we descended we decided to go back the hostel for some dinner.  We found the Moulin Rouge on the way there (our hostel was only 2 blocks away).

After dinner we ventured back out to the Arc de Triomphe to see it at night. We made a split second decision to climb it also (oh yeah…more stairs.). The winding circular staircase made me very dizzy, but the night view at the top was totally worth it. Paris is so much prettier at night! From the Arc de Triomphe, we could see La Defense, so we decided to go check that out as well. Then we went back to the Eiffel Tower to take night pictures! By then we were both exhausted, so we went back to the hostel to pass out.